PITTSBURGH — A Pittsburgh man being tried on charges he shot and killed three police officers who responded to a domestic dispute with his mother told a friend who called him on his cellphone during the incident that he shot them and made similar remarks in a call to 911.
Michael Bogart, then a 16-year-old friend of accused gunman Richard Poplawski, told a court Tuesday that he called Poplawski's cellphone after friends told him about television reports detailing a shooting in his neighborhood.
Unaware that Poplawski was involved, Bogart testified that he asked him what he was doing.
He said that Poplawski told him: "I got shot. I shot three cops. I'm probably going to bleed to death and go to jail for the rest of my life."
The details came as testimony continued in the second day of Poplawski's trial.
A pair of Allegheny County 911 operators also testified to handling a call from Poplawski who wanted to surrender and talked about being wounded and shooting police.
In the call, Poplawski said his leg was injured and he was laying in a pool of blood and went on to promise that he would not shoot if an officer with a "nice voice" were sent to his home to accept his surrender.
Earlier, two SWAT officers who responded to the scene described in detail the gunbattle with Poplawski, and officers who arrived to rescue their slain comrades.
Officer Stephen Mescan said that each of the seven SWAT team members in their armored vehicle had 125 rounds of ammunition. The intensity of the back-and-forth exchange with the 24-year-old man, firing from a second-floor window of his mother's home, was such that extra ammunition had to be brought to them.
By the time the SWAT vehicle had arrived, Allegheny County Prosecutors said that Poplawski had already shot and killed Officer Paul Sciullio II, who was the first to arrive at the house of a domestic disturbance call was made by Poplawski's mother, Margaret.
Prosecutors hope to convict Poplawski of first-degree murder for killing Sciullo and two other police officers who responded, including Stephen Mayhle who engaged in a short gunbattle before being killed. The third officer killed, Eric Kelly, had arrived home — about two blocks from Poplawski's residence — after an overnight shift but went to back up the others when he heard radio calls about the shootings.
Poplawski's public defender, Lisa Middleman, has stopped short of flatly denying his role in the shooting but told the jury in her opening statement that some witnesses and physical evidence will contradict the police version of the shooting, without offering specifics.
Deputy District Attorney Mark Tranquilli said Poplawski shot Kelly before he could get out of his car.
After another officer in a van was able to pull Kelly from the scene, the SWAT team arrived in their vehicle and forced it into a parking space in front of Poplawski's home by ramming a parked car and two parked Pittsburgh police cruisers that were already on scene.
Shortly after that, a SWAT sniper, Officer William Friburger, ran to a home down the street and somewhat diagonal from the Poplawski residence and took up an observation post on the front porch.
Friburger told the court that his primary responsibility was to observe and feed intelligence to other police officers. He said his secondary responsibility was to shoot Poplawski, but only if an opportunity to do so arose.
Friburger said his training helped determine that Poplawski was firing from back inside the upstairs bedroom but not directly by the window. He determined that by watching how the curtains moved when Poplawski fired despite the muzzle of his gun not being visible.
Based on his vantage point, Friburger said he shot diagonally through a front picture window next to the bedrrom that he believed would let the bullets penetrate the wall into the room where Poplawski was.
Friburger said the tactic worked because moments later Poplawski's muzzle was seen ptrotruding from the window. He fired at the muzzle, knocking the gun back.
The SWAT officers were the first two witnesses to testify in the second day of Poplawski's murder trial.
Poplawski faces three umbrella counts of criminal homicide, and could face the death penalty if the jury decides any or all the shootings rise to first-degree murder.
He's also charged with nine counts each of attempted murder and assault on law officers for shooting at other police, as well as lesser charges, prosecutors said.